Session Tracks at CNU 22

Sustainability isn't just about the environment. It encompasses the 3 Es: equity, economics and ecology. As the general public grows more aware and engaged in these issues, understanding sustainability practices becomes a vital piece of the development process. These practices include protecting and enhancing natural resources; using sound environmental practices as economic revitalization tools; and building upon lessons learned from communities impacted by severe weather and environmental events. This track will explore the Economic Impacts of Climate Change, Emulating Natural Processes and Bioclimatic Design in a Post-Industrial City, Protecting the Great Lakes through Waterfront & Watershed Connections, Planning & Green Infrastructure, Equity and Regional Sustainability Planning, and Rebuilding Communities, and explore Lessons Learned.

Planning for Healthy Places

By joining forces with health professionals, planners, developers, architects, and engineers can help ease America’s health crises (and save money to boot). Improving quality of place can lead to a reduction in health care costs, while simultaneously enhancing the potential for business attraction, retention and growth. Fiscally Fit: Planning for Healthy Places will explore and encourage collaborations among these disciplines, and provide tools and success stories. Topic suggestions include: Health Districts/Medical Campuses, active transport, aging in place, code reform, suburban retrofit, healthy planning in rural environments, food security, measuring the health impact of design decisions, and brownfields redevelopment.

Transportation

The decisions we all make to get around each day are largely influenced by the type of systems in place to support them. Communities that have demonstrated a commitment to build a network supporting all people are seeing returns in quality of life, environmental sustainability and economic revitalization. This strategy is a multi-faceted approach that aims at removing past scars by establishing a policy framework that institutionalizes complete streets as part of our everyday decision making process. The end result is a seamless network ensuring that pedestrians, bicycles, transit and vehicles can all operate together in a safe and accessible system.

Implementation and Finance

Moving from great design on paper to great projects in your community requires bureaucratic, administrative, financial, political, and marketing skills. How can we hone these skills to make projects a reality? Whether a community pursues a purely form-based code, a hybrid code, or modifies existing land use regulations, there are examples of code and administrative changes that can help any municipality- rural town, village, suburban town, or city- foster great projects. Understanding the fiscal challenges of market-based infill development and New Urbanist design and the role played by public sector incentives, especially in a weak market like Upstate New York, will also help get from “plan” to “place.” Finally, effectively addresses public and elected official misunderstanding or even hostility to infill development in a home-rule system of local government like New York State is critically important.

Buffalo-Niagara: The Bi-National Region

The Buffalo Niagara Region sits at the heart of one of North-America's largest metropolitan regions -- stretching from Toronto to Rochester -- linked by strong economic, social and cultural ties, but also characterized by differences in terms of demographic trends, land use and development patterns, transportation planning and economic growth. This track will examine both the common and divergent experiences, challenges and opportunities on both sides of the border concerning the role of urbanism in shaping development, transportation, sustainability and wellness.

Design and Planning

Buffalo is one of the best planned cities in the US. From Ellicott to Olmsted, the planning tradition is rich in its overlays of landscape design and layout. The City has one of the Nation’s most impressive collections of architecture, including master works by Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and Louise Bethune. The neighboring communities represent the birth places for municipal electricity, the evolution of Steel manufacturing at its apex and the headquarters for the Northern 1812 War effort; those activities have left an indelible mark on the landscape and build out of the WNY Region. Now the City and regional communities are making strides toward a rebirth, with new premier medical facilities in construction and applications of Form Based Codes; with new attention to historic preservation and adaptive reuse strategies. This track will look at our historically significant communities, what they can teach us about current design practices and focus on the re-application New Urbanist principles to our existing urban infrastructure. The track will identify opportunities in the cities of Buffalo and Rochester as well as discuss the role of design in suburban retrofit opportunities.